The Independent Inventor: Hero or Fool?

Abstract

In this paper I will tackle a subject often neglected when grand treatises on innovation are written: the independent inventor. Although independent inventors are not as significant as they once were, their death is, as Mark Twain said, responding to reports of his own demise, "very much exaggerated." Not only do independent inventors still invent, they are more successful than is generally thought. Here I would like to take the time to give an in-depth examination of this interesting species.